Band:	Annihilator
Album:	All For You
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	May 2004

01. All For You
02. Dr. Psycho
03. Demon Dance
04. The One
05. Bled
06. Both Of Me
07. Rage Absolute
08. Holding On
09. Nightmare Factory
10. Sound Of Horror

I wonder how many times Jeff Waters is going to fool around with the line up of Annihilator until he finds the one (no pun intended)... This time around he got hold of a young singer called Dave Padden - THE singer of Annihilator in Waters's own words - and of drummer Mike Mangini (Extreme, Steve Vai) to form, as always, the best band he ever played in (or so he said). The result is... well, let's put it mildly, special. I hated this album when I first heard it, and more or less hated it for a whole year afterwards. Now two and a half years have gone, Annihilator has released what is in my holy opinion something close to a masterpiece("Schizo Deluxe"), or at least their best album since Never, Neverland, so I can have a fresh look at this album.

Guess what, it is definitely not as bad as I recalled. It even has some good - let's even say excellent - moments. Nothing that can be compared with what you rightfully expect from this band - understand another Alice In Hell with good vocals - but still, some parts of All For You made me go "wow, I had not heard something like that for a veeeery long time". Yes my little rocking amigos, there are minutes of pure genius on this album.

Let's start with the bad points though. The vocals generally ruin this album. Please don't get me wrong, Dave Padden is one hell of a singer. Seriously, he's able to scream like noone then sing in the deepest and most emotional manner before growling like a goregrind dude. Bad thing is that he manages to make it all sound like a nu metal singer trying to sound thrash. This guy proved on the following album that he may very well be the singer Waters had been waiting for all his life but on All For You he just doesn't fit. For example, "Demon Dance" could have been one of the best songs of the album with this amazing riff à la Exodus but the mad televangelist vocals make me crave for a big rock to crush my computer and put an end to this torture.

But once you are able to separate the vocals from the music, you find yourself enjoying most of the songs. "All For You" is diverse enough to keep you interested all along, "Dr. Psycho" is an original piece of hard rock/thrash and "Rage Absolute" is the absolute thrasher. This song alone is reminiscent of what the band was able to create 15 years ago and for once Padden matches the fury of the riffs. An almost perfect song. And then you come to my personal favourite: "The One". Beware, this song uses all the tricks a metal ballad needs to have. This is clichesque as hell, it sounds like a metal version of Extreme's "More Than Words", you've heard stuff like that one thousand times before, and yet it works perfectly well. The vocals, the emotional guitar playing, the simple yet efficient lyrics and the catchy chorus, everything concurs in making this a great moment. I don't know why thrash metal bands always write the best ballads, but "The One" is certainly the best I've heard since Testament's "The Ballad". Cheesy as never before but so great when you feel down... Must be that sentimental part of me that I'm trying to lay hidden speaking now...

Anyway, a good summary of "All For You" would be that the music is generally excellent - there's such a great collection of riffs - while the vocals are not. If it wasn't for a few fillers such as "Bled", "Both Of Me" and "Holding On" this album would even get a very good rating also thanks to the great artwork. It's just the vocals that don't do it for me... But it is still better than the previous three Annihilator releases.

Highlights: All For You, Dr. Psycho, The One, Rage Absolute